Today's work and home lifestyles are busy ones. Many families have a large number of family members, with each family member typically leading a very busy life. Family members work, travel, play, socialize, and generally engage in a wide variety of activities. As a result of today's hectic schedules, more and more people are using computers and the Internet to help simplify their lives. For instance, people are using the Internet to buy airline tickets and to retrieve flight information, to pay bills, schedule appointments, to buy gifts for others, and to perform a myriad of other tasks. While many of these services provide a degree of convenience for users, current Internet services like these suffer from a number of drawbacks that render them less than completely helpful.
One drawback to current Internet services is that these services require users to visit a World Wide Web (“Web” or “WWW”) site to obtain information or take action. For instance, if a user wants to obtain information regarding whether or not an airline flight has been delayed, the user must visit the airline's Web site and request this information. If the user does not visit the Web site, the user is unable to obtain the flight information. Because users have to “pull” information from Web sites rather than information being “pushed” to them from the Web sites, users may miss important notifications or other information. While some Web sites will send information to users via electronic mail messages, users will not receive the information if they do not check their e-mail. This can be a serious drawback for users that do not check their e-mail frequently.
Another drawback to current Internet services is that there is no convenient, unified way to manage information available from multiple sources of information, such as Web sites. So, for instance, if a user wants to obtain information regarding the status of a flight and information regarding the payment of a bill, the user must visit the both the airline Web site and a Web site that provides information regarding the bill. While some service providers will send e-mail messages with this type of information, many will not. Moreover, as mentioned above, in order to receive this information via e-mail, a user must launch an e-mail reader application and read the e-mail. If the user does not remember to check their e-mail, they will not receive the notification. This can be particularly problematic for messages containing time sensitive information. Time sensitive information contained in a message may be meaningless if a user does not check their e-mail until some time after the message is delivered.
Therefore, in light of the above, there is a need for a method, system, apparatus, and computer-readable medium for interactive notification of events that can notify a user of the occurrence of an event without requiring the user to launch and utilize an application program such as an e-mail client. There is a further need for a method, system, apparatus, and computer-readable medium for interactive notification of events that can provide notification of the occurrence of events in a convenient, unified manner so that users can receive notifications of events from multiple sources by utilizing a single consistent interface.